Sports and Stoicism

Physical activity has always been an essential part of my life. I have always had to do the minimum amount in the span of a few days in order to stay sane.

I never asked myself why. Maybe it was just a part of my upbringing. I was raised on the importance of sports, told that you can’t have much if you don’t have good health, and, during the pandemic, we even kept an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my physical activity. Looking back, I’m very grateful to have had this idea ingrained in me. It aligns with Ancient Greek thought, with their ideal of καλος καγαθος (beautiful and noble, i.e., maintaining both the mind and body), and, in fact, my experience with sports has perhaps taught me just as much stoic philosophy as literature has. However, I will admit that I sometimes used to go to the tennis courts rather begrudgingly, annoyed at having to close my book. 

Tennis, in particular, has been a sort of a roller coaster. I usually played with my father, known around the school as the Lycée assistant tennis coach M. Belga, and while it was fun, I would sometimes get irritated. The way I was taught, tennis is a sport in which there can be no room for excuses: there has to be honesty with oneself, a sense of patience, and an unshakeable good attitude. This is nice in theory. In practice, it was something else entirely. I was trying, but it was never enough, so maybe I wasn’t trying enough, but I was, and I would circle around these thoughts, trying to adhere to Nadal’s speeches on perseverance and virtue, and, really, I hadn't yet realized that the sport was inherently mental; it required you to consistently get over it, to let go, to play point by point. I owe a great amount to tennis. It has ultimately taught me to love suffering, which is incredibly Greek (like Rosie said in Mamma Mia: it is very Greek!). Moreover, joining the girls’ tennis team was pivotal in my rocky relationship with tennis. I had a newfound love for the sport, being low-competition with a particularly laidback coach and pizza galore every match, representing something concrete with other people. The Greeks valued sports for this reason as well; it fostered respect and unity. 

Photo via Getty Images.

Another sport which really requires you to love suffering is running, which I have learned to love. On that note, I haven’t read it, but I heard in the grapevine (M. Pareira, Mme Clement, Zofia, Anna, etc) that What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami is very good, so you should read it! Similarly, surfing represents a similar sentiment for me. I’ve tried to surf for a while, but it was always such a schlep, and I’d always quit, especially because, after a while, it would get too cold anyway, which felt like a very valid reason to not go. Last summer, however, I stopped dreading it and actually motivated myself to pursue the sport I always admired. I’ll hopefully continue in the terrifyingly cold waters of Fife, Scotland. After all, if I do, the water being too cold will no longer be an excuse to stop because it will be in a perpetual state of too cold. 

It may have taken me a while to truly value the importance of sports, having dismissed it as a part of the routine without taking the time to understand why it felt so necessary to me. Yet, I’ve finally begun to see its connection with Greek values: the love of suffering, the stoic ideas of resilience, and the sense of camaraderie. In all the aforementioned sports, the main opponent is yourself. It is ultimately the knowledge that you put your everything into something, even if it doesn’t work out as hoped for, which is the most fulfilling feeling.